pH and Electromagnetic Dual-Remoted Drug Delivery Based on Bimodal Superparamagnetic Fe3O4@Porous Silica Nanoparticles

Haihua Hu1,2

Haopeng Liu1,2

Dianjun Zhang1,2

Jianjun Wang3

Gaowu Qin3

Xuefeng Zhang1,2,Email

1 Key Laboratory for Anisotropy and Texture of Materials (ME), School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, China

2 Innovative Center of Advanced Materials, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, 310018, China

3 Shenyang Northeastern Institute of Metal Materials Co., Ltd, Shenyang, 110108,  China

Abstract

We developed a molecular-grafting procedure to the synthesis of ultrathin Fe3O4 decorated Fe3O4/silica core/shell nanoparticles. Such nanoparticles demonstrated superparamagnetic transitions at temperatures of 14 K and 213 K and weak magnetic interactions between the decorated ultrathin Fe3O4 and Fe3O4 cores. When evaluated for the electromagnetically/pH switchable drug delivery, the Fe3O4/silica/Fe3O4 nanoparticles manifest a better controllability for enhancing the drug release than the Fe3O4/silica nanoparticles, ascribed to the bimodal hyperthermia effect of internal ~10 nm Fe3O4 cores and externally decorated ~2.5 nm Fe3O4 nanoparticles.